FSMO Role Placement - 2 DC's.

[WS]

Hi There,

We have two DC's in the root of our AD forest, one is the "infrastructure
master", and the other is the "GC/RID/PDC emulator".

Is this an optimal distribution of roles? Would it be better to have one as
the "infrastructure master/RID/PDC", and the other as just a GC?

Any help most appreciated!

Thanks.

 

[Chriss3]

No it will make no different so far I know, DCs holding fsmo roles are of
course more trafficed than who dose not, How ever this depends on how match
users you have and so on. Make sure you not mix infrastructure master and GC
on the same domain controller in the forest root domain if you have multiple
domains.

 

[Anand Dusi [MSFT]]

hello ,

considering that you have 2 DC's following are the recommendations for placement of the FSMO roles .. ,

**
Place the RID and PDC emulator roles on the same domain controller. Good communication from the PDC to the
RID master is desirable as downlevel clients and applications target the PDC, making it a large consumer of
RIDs. It is also easier to keep track of FSMO roles if you cluster them on fewer machines.

If the load on the primary FSMO load justifies a move, place the RID and Pdomain controller emulator roles on
separate domain controllers in the same domain and active directory site that are direct replication partners of
each other.
As a general rule, the infrastructure master should be located on a nonglobal catalog server that has a direct
connection object to some global catalog in the forest, preferably in the same Active Directory site. Because
the global catalog server holds a partial replica of every object in the forest, the infrastructure master, if placed
on a global catalog server, will never update anything, because it does not contain any references to objects
that it does not hold. Two exceptions to the "do not place the infrastructure master on a global catalog server"
rule are:
Single domain forest:

In a forest that contains a single Active Directory domain, there are no phantoms, and so the infrastructure
master has no work to do. The infrastructure master may be placed on any domain controller in the domain.
Multidomain forest where every domain controller holds the global catalog:

If every domain controller in the domain also hosts the global catalog, then there are no phantoms or work for
the infrastructure master to do. The infrastructure master may be placed on any domain controller in the
domain.
At the forest level, the schema master and domain naming master roles should be placed on the same domain
controller as they are rarely used and should be tightly controlled. Additionally, the domain naming master
FSMO should also be a global catalog server.

you can also refer to the following links for more information on the FSMO positioning ..


http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?
scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/Q223/3/46.ASP&NoWebContent=1


http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?
scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/Q197/1/32.ASP&NoWebContent=1

Anand Dusi


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